At just 24 years of age, Dain Yoon is already a master when it comes to optical illusions. Using only makeup, face paint and brushes, she uses her own face and body as canvas for mind-bending visual effects.

Yoon’s talent for painting was obvious from a very young age, and it later allowed her to attend some of the most prestigious art schools in South Korea – Yewon Arts Secondary, Seoul Arts High School and the Korean National University of Arts. But instead of pursuing what you would call a conventional artistic career, she decided to focus on ‘illusion art’, a modern art form that has proven very popular thanks to social media sites like Instagram and Facebook.

A 22-year-old French makeup artist recently caused quite a lot of dropped jaws on Twitter with a set of photos of a “painting” whose protagonist turned out to be a living, breathing model.

I don’t know if that opening line made any sense to you (probably not), but what 22-year-old Kenza managed to do is best explained in pictures, not words. Inspired by the work of Alexa Meade, an exceptionally talented artist whose mind-boggling masterpieces we featured a few years ago, the aspiring makeup artist painted a human model with broad brushstrokes to create the illusion that she was actually a character in a painting, and not a real live person. I think she pulled it off magnificently, and so do the tens of thousands of people who liked and shared her pics on social media.

Stella Sironen, a young makeup artist from Finland, recently shared a photo of her with her eyebrows split down the middle like bird feathers, joking that she was starting a new beauty trend. Little did she know that the internet would end up taking her seriously.

Sironen, whose makeup skills have earned her over 48,000 followers on Instagram, posted the viral photos of her sporting feathered brows a few days ago, crediting her friend @leevitu for coming up with the trick while brushing her eyebrows. He apparently used a glue stick to split the eyebrows down the middle horizontally and brush the eyebrows up and down to achieve that aviary look. As Stella later admitted, she jokingly captioned the first photo with the text “so i’m starting this new brow trend please recreate it and wear it everyday and dont forget to tag me like and subscribe and hit that bell button.” Only people apparently didn’t get the joke.

31-year-old Mimi Choi, a makeup artist from Vancouver, spends hours turning her face into mind-boggling optical illusions that look photoshopped at first glance.

A former schoolteacher, Choi got into makeup only three years ago, attending classes at Blanche Macdonald, a local beauty school, to learn the basics of the craft. She’s come a long way since then, though, and today she uses her makeup skills to turn her own face into incredible optical illusions.

It sounds like one of those funny news articles you read on sites like The Onion, but this one is sadly true. A man from the United Arab Emirates divorced his young wife just days after their wedding, after seeing her makeup free for the first time.

The bizarre news was reported by psychologist Dr Abdul Aziz Asaf, who claims that the 28-year-old woman contacted his clinic to help her overcome the psychological suffering caused by the swift and unexpected divorce. Asaf did not reveal the woman’s identity for reasons of confidentiality, but told Gulf News that she had been engaged to a 34-year-old man for six months, before marrying him. Apparently, he had never seen her without makeup during all that time, because the first time he did, he hardly recognized her. The man accused Asaf’s patient of deceiving him by wearing so many cosmetics, including fake eyelashes, and not looking as pretty as before the wedding.

As hard as it may be for you to believe, the woman in the photos below is not reality TV star Kim Kardashian, but a 24-year old talented makeup artist from Croatia.

Jelena Peric has attracted over 700,000 followers on Instagram thanks to her uncanny resemblance to socialite Kim Kardashian. It’s nowhere close to the celebrity’s 74 million followers, but for a young makeup artist from Zagreb, Croatia, it’s pretty impressive. Jelena says she is not very surprised by the high number of followers she’s been getting ever since she started posting photos of herself online, considering how popular her inspiration is, and the “very big effort” she has put into nailing not only her facial features, but also her curvy figure and clothing style.

With the Adorn 3D makeup pen you will apparently no longer have to worry about the dreary mission of hunting for the right shade of foundation. This revolutionary gadget is a scanner-3D printer combo that uses its inbuilt sensors to accurately scan and precisely match the color of your skin regardless of ethnicity and skin tone, even in total darkness.

“They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” an Adorn spokesperson said. “We like to say it’s in one clever pen. No longer will ladies have to settle for coverage that’s too light or dark. With Adorn, they can print catwalk worthy coverage, at the touch of a button.”

According to the company’s website, the device is so accurate that you’ll never be able to tell the difference. It first scans the user’s face and matches the detected shade to its database of over 75,000 tones. Once the scan is complete, it lets out a small beep, and then prints foundation of that exact color from its pre-filled foundation cartridge onto your fingertips ready to be applied.

It’s hard to imagine how putting dead fish on your face can pass off as make up, but that didn’t stop Russian makeup artist Elya Bulochka using them as facial accessories for a marine-themed photo shoot. Her original idea, however, sparked a deluge of criticism and outrage on Instagram for what is being viewed as a highly insensitive act. A lot of her 25,000 followers on Instagram called it ‘unnecessary’, saying “it’s not art, just another stupid person killing animals for nothing.”

Elya first shared a photo of her holding a bag of newly purchased aquarium captioned: ‘Guess what I’m going to be wearing today?’ She followed that first post with photos of models wearing mermaid makeup that included what were undoubtedly dead angelfish, neon tetra and other small fish. Many more of her followers asked if the fish were real and she confirmed they were ‘already dead. Same as in your dining plates.’

There was a time when freckles were considered unsightly, but they might just become the ‘in’ thing when this new cosmetic fake-freckle kit hits the market!

Called ‘Freck Yourself’, the kit comes with a set of 72 self-adhesive stencils and a rollerball containing skin-pigmenting formula. Users need to place the stencil on the spot where they want freckles, and then roll the formula all over it. The result is a sun-kissed look that is guaranteed to last for two days with one-time use, or up to six weeks with everyday use.

Freck Yourself is the brainchild of Los Angeles-based Remi Brixton, who always wanted to have freckles her whole life. “There is nothing more beautiful to me than bare skin and fresh freckles,” she said in a promotional video. “To me, they’re a mark of rebellious dreamers, wild adventures, and unapologetic beauty.”

Comic book makeup is a huge trend these days, but a few artists truly stand out for their spectacular work. Joining the ranks of Lianne Moseley and other Marvel makeup gurus is Argenis Pinal, a California-based cosmetologist.

Argenis is insanely popular on Instagram with over 100,000 followers. The man is a wizard with makeup – he’s managed to transform himself into almost several comic book characters and he’s done such a good job of it that you only realise you’re looking at a living person and not an illustration when he moves.

Lianne Moseley is not your average makeup artist. While she has a full-time job doing bridal makeup, her real passion lies in painting faces to resemble three-dimensional cartoon characters!

The 25-year-old said that her passion for comics began as a child – she would spend hours sketching Sailor Moon after school and pour over her brother’s graphic novels. She also picked up all her makeup skills growing up. “My mom sold catalogue cosmetics and right from the start, I just got right into it,” she said. “In high school instead of studying I spent a lot of time practicing and doing friend’s makeup.”

Although Moseley has been painting faces for over two years, she recently started doing the comic-style makeup that has made her so popular. “When I first did Archer, I posted it on my Facebook page and my friends liked it but I didn’t have a big following but my brother really liked it and he posted it on Reddit,” she said. “Just last night Ashton Kutcher shared an article on my work on his Facebook page.”

Lucia Pittalis, an Italian makeup artist and portrait painter, is a master of disguise – she can give herself a whole new identity with just a few strokes of makeup. All she needs are a few cosmetics, makeup tools, and wigs. The 43-year-old mostly chooses to turn herself into famous musicians, actors and fictional characters – both male and female.

Some of Lucia’s most epic transformations have been into iconic figures such as Marlon Brando, Walter White, and Bette Davis. She has also morphed into pop icons like Iggy Azalea, and movie characters like Rambo, Rocky, and Don Vito Corleone.

31-year-old actor and TV host Paolo Ballesteros specialises in transforming himself into female celebrities from around the world – including Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts and more. Believe it or not, there’s no Photoshop involved; Paolo uses only wigs, makeup, and colored contact lenses to complete the stunning transformations.

Paolo is the host of a popular TV show in the Philippines called Eat Bulaga. His transformations actually started as a segment on the show Super Sereyna, where he would surprise audiences with his mind blowing makeup skills. Paolo revealed that he is self-taught – he learned to apply makeup by watching YouTube tutorials, and he does it all by himself.

While most makeup artists tend to follow the conventional rules of of the trade, 25-year-old Laura Jenkinson prefers to do her own thing. For the past year, she has been using all her colorful cosmetics and makeup brushes to recreate popular cartoon characters on her mouth and chin. She paints them in such a way that her mouth becomes their mouth as well, making the characters instantly come alive.

London-based Laura has so far painted a host of characters on her mouth, including The Cookie Monster, Shrek, Taz the Tasmanian Devil and several others from Disney movies, Looney Tunes, Pixar, and South Park. Last week, she did Robin Williams’ genie from Aladdin as a tribute to the actor. She does the paintings so accurately that every time her lips move, it appears as though the character is talking.

Doctors recommend women remove their make-up every night before they go to sleep, in order to prevent damage to their skin, but a young South-Korean girl chose to wear her make-up mask full-time, for the last two years.

20-year-old Bae Dal-mi first discovered make-up when she was just 14. You could say it was love at first brush, and ever since then, the young Koream developed her make-up talents to the point where she became so dependent on it that she didn’t want to remove it anymore. As she kept applying ever-thicker layers of make-up on her face, the mirror became the most important item in Bae’s life and she declares “I wanted to look perfect at all time, I even slept with the make-up on.” Shae wasn’t satisfied with her appearance, and said she wanted to have plastic surgery in 10 different places.

For the last two years, the young girl never used make-up removers, so her mother, exasperated by Bae’s behaviour, contacted a TV station and told them Bae’s incredible story. During a variety show, dermatologists managed to convince Bae Dal-mi to finally remove the layers of make-up, and after a specialized check-up they found her skin was two times older than her actual age. All because of an obsession with beauty…

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